Diaphragm calls, friction calls, turkey choke tubes, squealing hen calls, clucks, purrs, putts, yelps, kee kees, gobbles turkey hunters collect some strange sound-making devices in their quest for those wild, flighty birds.
Anybody whos spent a fair amount of time in the field hunting turkeys probably has seen some unusual things, but I imagine precious few people have seen anything quite like the turkey story Im about to pass on to you this Thanksgiving week.
This turkey event happened about 10 years ago. It involves the Colorado Division of Wildlife, which, by the way, recently merged with state parks to form Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Back then, the division of wildlife wanted to catch some wild turkeys on the eastern edge of the Uncompahgre Plateau. I dont remember every detail perfectly, but, as I recall, it went something like this:
On a private farm generally west of Montrose, the wildlife folks set up a large drop net on poles about 10 feet overhead. The net was perhaps 40 feet across, and the division of wildlife sprinkled feed under it to lure wild turkeys. The wildlife officials had been feeding a flock of wild turkeys at the same spot for enough days to get the turkeys used to feeding there.
At the break of dawn, after the net was set up and the feed sprinkled around, the wildlife officials retreated over a hill and waited. All in all, about six trucks crammed with wildlife officials and volunteers waited for the turkeys to take the bait.
Unable to resist the tasty feed, the wild turkeys dropped out of their roost about 100 yards away and wandered under the net to feed. When most of the flock was under the net, all hell broke loose.
A remotely activated triggering device dropped the net onto the flock. Turkeys scrambled to fly away, but they flew into the falling net. Trucks roared over the hill and skidded to a halt near the net. About two dozen wildlife officials and volunteers leaped out of the vehicles, dashed to the net, and as gently but quickly as they could each person secured a wild turkey under the net.
From that point, operation turkey net became a matter of carefully moving each bird out from under the large net, clipping an identification band onto its leg, and putting it in a container for transport to another area of Colorado a place that had good turkey habitat but needed turkeys.
Officials often blindfold wildlife when they capture animals for research. You might think that would terrify an animal, but it actually reduces an animals stress level. The technique works on everything from elk to alligators, and it works on wild turkeys.
On this Uncompahgre Plateau capture, the Ridge Runners chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation had volunteered part of its leadership staff, along with a handful of excited youngsters in camo and Carhartts, to help wrangle the wild toms and hens.
So a bunch of kids, probably about 10 to 15 years old, waited in line to have an ID leg band clipped on their turkey. Each of the turkeys was sporting a blindfold, and that blindfold was a sock.
Yup a sock. Go figure; an old sock slips right over a turkeys head and long neck, and makes a great blindfold.
Once they had the blindfolds on, the turkeys still clucked and fretted, but for the most part, they didnt struggle.
Except for one.
I was photographing a district wildlife manager aka game warden clipping ID leg bands on a turkey when I heard a collective shout from the crowd of turkey wranglers.
The cry and the loud flap of wings behind me urged me to swing around, and there it was, outlined against the early morning sky, wings outstretched and thumping the winter air, neck and head extended and seeking freedom.
And in case you havent guessed yet this wild turkey still had a sock pulled over its head.
Sock Head flapped above the gawking turkey wranglers, leveled out at about 10 feet, shot across the top of a barbed wire fence and disappeared across a fallow field.
I jerked my camera around like a hunter trying to swing a shotgun for a quick shot, but Sock Head was too fast. That would have been my wild turkey shot of a lifetime a photograph of a Merriams turkey flapping across the Colorado dawn with a sock over its head, blind but free.
But I missed.
I dont know what happened to Sock Head. The division of wildlife folks I worked with over the years always went out of their way to protect wildlife during research operations, so they probably found Sock Head eventually and removed the blindfold.
I do know Colorado Parks and Wildlife commissioners tweaked turkey hunting regulations earlier this month to help reduce conflicts for agricultural producers and to improve opportunities for hunters.
I wonder if parks and wildlife will ever have a special season for that rare and elusive subspecies of Merriams wild turkey known as the Sock Head.
Russell Smyth is managing editor of the Cortez Journal. He can be reached at 564-6030 or [email protected].
